Re: a big dilemma...need your help.

[garyb]

> one of the solutions that i have in mind is to generate csv file every week
> and email it to their dba and ask him/her to upload to their server.
> just in case they do not need any manual intervention in updating their dbms
> server, how do i go about doing this ? looks like i need access to their
> server, get purchase history records from my server, insert them into their
> server. sounds simple but how can this be done ? 2 different networks and
> miles apart. has anyone got any ideas ?

You could use, for example PHP on your server to accept a request for the  
appropriate query, perform the query on your server, and deliver an XML file  
to them.  On their end, a similar PHP or perl or whatever script can generate  
the request for the web and store the data in their database.

You might look closely at using XML as the intermediate language.  XML is  
becoming very popular for inter-company database sharing.  Their RDBMS may  
well have an XML interface already.  This would have the advantage of  
generality.  You can go from XML to almost anything, and you can sell this  
feature to other companies as well.

Another possible component or alternative is to build a temporary VPN and  
allow one server to query the other directly.  Use SSH or any of several SSL  
tunnelling software packages (www.c2.net has one), and you can tunnel the  
database port or web access through the net between your two organizations.

I did this kind of thing for my previous employer, mostly for web access but  
also for other things including LDAP queries over a firewall.  It's all  
quite doable.  (I'm available in March!! :O)
G